


Shut Up, Mulder, I'm Playing Baseball

by Sab



Category: The X-Files
Genre: (Uploaded by Punk), Episode Related, Episode: s06e19 The Unnatural, Gen, Late Night Baseball, Scully Having Fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-10-13
Updated: 1999-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-03 09:54:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sab/pseuds/Sab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two and a half minutes in the life of Dana Scully. (Uploaded by Punk, from Gossamer.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shut Up, Mulder, I'm Playing Baseball

**Author's Note:**

> Mr. Duchovny, whom I often write off as being not tremendously spectacular, IS in fact tremendously spectacular, and his script for this episode is a true work of genius. I've stolen his lines of dialogue and appropriated them because they are perfect, and nothing, really, could make his shimmering last scene of this episode any better, but I wanted to be a part of it so I stuck my nose in anyway. Thank you, David!

A long time ago, when my sister was in college, she called me past midnight across three timezones and woke me up.

"I've decided only four people in this world love me," she said, immediately, practically, without preamble, as soon as I answered the phone.

"Hi, Missy," I had said.

"You and mom and dad and Bill," she said. "And even you only love me because you have to. It's not a bad thing; I've just realized that that's the way it is."

My sister; the Zen Buddhist. "No one really cares about anyone else," she continued. "No one ever really knows anyone."

I chewed on it for a while. "That might be true," I conceded. "But you can't think about it. You have to just sort of wake up and do your work and get through your day."

"Oh, Dana," she'd said, "the world sucks. There's so much bad stuff, and no one cares. We get in our cars and do our yuppie things and we're just killing the rest of the world, all the third world countries and all the starving people, because no one, really, fundamentally, thinks about or cares about anyone other than themselves. No one can."

"Because it's too scary, I think," I said. "It's like trying to figure out what's outside the universe. It will just give you a headache."

"It pisses me off," she said. "No one cares."

"I love you, Missy. Even if you weren't my sister," I'd said.

I was afraid of everyone, then, of everything. I lived each day to please a father who couldn't be pleased, to love a mother who couldn't express affection, to get my nose bloodied by a brother who never cried, to live up to my sister's unattainable ethics. We were that repressed military family you read about, all broad smiles and starched cotton and fruitcakes for the neighbors. Emotion was messy, unnecessary, irrelevant, unspeakable. I cried if I got kicked, not if my heart was broken. I shouted out when appropriate, and only when appropriate, not when I wanted to wail to the world my frustrations, my adolescent fears. It's gone now, that family, physically, spiritually, emotionally. My father is gone; my sister is gone; the rest of us trudge on, each with our dark secrets, afraid to share them, afraid to let on that we are none of us okay.

The world is a godawful, hellish place, and I am terrified ninety percent of the time; the other ten percent I'm sleeping or drunk. Mulder says I never smile. Rather, Mulder _jokes_ that I never smile, but it's not really a joke, just a reiteration of the fact that _he_ does. Smile, that is. All the time. I don't know how he does it, in the face of all we've seen, but at the bloodiest crime scene, in the face of death, with villains rampant and unpunished, I've seen Mulder lean down face to face with a six year old kid and say, "hey, buddy, is that a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger you got there? Cool! Show me how it works."

I think about crying, when I remember moments like that. I can't really cry; it's been drummed out of me; I am too stable, hyper-stable, uber-stable these days; I am unbreakable. So I cry literarily, as in, like literature. I walk away from the scene thinking about the beauty of it and my brain spells out, "in the rain, Agent Scully walked away, crying." But of course my eyes are dry.

Because where I am selfish, he is selfless. Which makes him markedly and unfathomably stupid at times, so unsure of what he wants, so unsure whose ghost he's trying to please. This is how I forgive him for the times he's wounded me, and also how I know he loves me. He is capable of love in a way that I haven't been since I was twelve years old at summer camp obsessing about the counselors who were older and smarter and prettier than I was. Everything was so profound, then; I would sit up at night scribbling in my diary all those lines of poetry I thought I felt, all those Euro-pop profundities of coming of age. In my small literary world I'd sit up all night trying to figure out which boy I was supposed to fantasize about so I could teach myself to masturbate, and cry about it later.

I have forgotten how _not_ to play the part. I have no idea what there is of me that's fundamental beneath this. I don't know why I do what I do; I don't know why I follow Mulder, and when I force myself to think about it, the hugeness of it sends me, like Melissa all those years ago, idiotic with terror. What's outside the universe? I could think about it, but I might never leave the house again.

I had faith, I had my good Christian faith but I need the answers spelled out so I turned to science. But all that brought me was the fat splat of truth that there is so much we don't know, that nothing works out right, that nothing ties up in the end, and that no matter how much Euro-pop you listen to, you won't have the relationship they're singing about because Melissa was right and reality doesn't work that way.

I am so scared. I want to know everything and I don't want to know that's impossible. I want to believe that everything can be proven, where Mulder simply wants to believe. That terrifies me, that blind faith of his that lets his face break into a smile because his world doesn't need boundaries the way mine does, because, for him, simply believing is enough.

Anyway, he's called me here tonight and I am twisting my face to become his Dana Scully, Mulder's Scully, that noble testament to stoicism. I don't forget to lock the car.

It's a beautiful night, starry and clear. The air smells like dead grass and manure, like life. He's standing there in a baseball jersey, swinging a bat under the floodlights.

"So, uh, I get this message marked urgent on my answering service from one Fox Mantle, telling me to come down to the park for a very special, very early or very late birthday present," I say, leaning against the batting cage, attempting coy because I know he likes it. "And Mulder, I don't see any nicely wrapped presents lying around, so what gives?"

"You've never hit a baseball, have you, Scully?" he asks without really looking at me.

Of course I have. But that's not the right answer, and I'm playing the game; I'm Mulder's Scully. "No, I guess I have, uh, found more necessary things to do with my time than slap a piece of horsehide with a stick."

"Get over here, Scully."

It is truly a beautiful night. I cross to him and he slips the bat in my hands, wraps his arms around me. He's warm, sweaty in a bad way but I don't mind; I like it.

"This my birthday present, Mulder? You shouldn't have."

"This ain't cheap; I'm paying that kid ten bucks an hour to shag balls."

What kid? Oh.

"Hey, it's not a bad piece of ash, huh?"

He's playing with me, so I give him the look he wants me to give him; twist my mouth at his possible innuendo.

"The bat. Talking about the bat. Now, don't strangle it. You just want to shake hands with it. 'Hello, Mr. Bat, pleasure to make your acquaintance.' 'Oh, no, no, Ms. Scully, the pleasure is all mine.'"

I remember the kid and the Power Ranger and Mulder's just so fucking beautiful the tears nearly spring unbidden. But he's tickling me with his breath and this is about bodies now and the rest of the world is slipping away, and I laugh without meaning to.

"Now we want to, we want to go hips before hands," he says, turning my body with his. I try not to be awkward but we're all elbows. Hips before hands, okay. I can do this. "We want to stride forward and turn that's all we're thinking about. So we go hips before hands, all right?"

"Okay," I say. The dirt on the plate is slippery and I kick my feet into the ground a little, getting my balance.

"One more time. Hips before hands. All right? What is it?"

I got it, I got it. "Hips before hands." I show him.

"Now, we're gonna wait on the pitch, we're gonna keep our eye on the ball, and we're just gonna make contact. We're not gonna think. We're just gonna let it fly, Scully, okay?"

I'm trying to make my body work and it's not used to this; I bite my lip. The world has dissolved around me and now everything I've got is all about the fact that when I turn my right knee bends and I'm not sure if that's right or not. I lean into Mulder, feel the way he pivots, try and mimic it.

"Mm hm," I nod.

"Ready?" He claps his hands over mine, slides them between mine on the bat. Where his hands were the bat is all sweaty, and now my shoulders are all screwed up. I slide his hands away again.

"I'm in the middle," I say.

"All right, fire away, poor boy." The kid at the pitching machine obliges.

And THWACK! Everything I've got turns ninety degrees and the bat makes contact and the ball goes flying and I can't even see where it's gone because my hands are ringing, literally ringing, singing out, my bones vibrating, and I guess it's okay that that knee bent after all because I don't feel it anymore.

"Ooh!" Did I say that?

"That's good." Did _he_ say _that_? Gotta get my feet lined up again because the pitch is coming and Mulder's still talking, mumbling against my ear as I try and square the ball in my field of vision..

"All right, now, what you may find to find as you're concentrating on that little ball..."

THWACK! I did it again. I rock. Let me go, Mulder, I can do it; I want to do it.

But he's still talking, "...the rest of the world just fades away, all your everyday nagging concerns..."

I LOVE THIS! I think I'm laughing and GOD! It is SUCH a gorgeous night!

"Ticking of your biological clock..." Mulder's prattling on.

THWACK! I watch this one, sailing up and taking its place among the stars where I put it, _I_ put it!

"How you probably couldn't afford that nice new suede coat on a G-woman's salary, how you threw away a promising career in medicine..." I can feel Mulder's lips moving on the top of my head; I can feel his heart pounding against my back or is that mine?

THWACK! Wheeeee!

"...to hunt aliens with a crackpot, albeit brilliant partner; getting to the heart of a global..."

THWACK! Keep 'em coming; I want to wail on pitch after pitch, I want to throw my entire body at that ball that's sailing for my head, I want to scream and punch and dive at the ground and taste this summer night and this body of mine that's just waking up...

And Mulder's still going on about something, "...conspiracy; your obscenely overdue triple-x bill; oh, I'm sorry Scully, those..."

He groans his words as we lean into the pitch together, offer our combined weight against its velocity and we win! THWACK!

"...last two problems were mine, not yours." And I just can't listen anymore because there's so much other stuff to do and I'm furrowing my brow and biting my lip and we are one body and I want the pitch to come harder, faster, and I can't tell where Mulder stops and I begin and I stop and the bat begins but the ball is coming and I love everything I am alive! God damn it and I'm not scared of anything because the only question is hips before hands and I've got it and Mulder's got it and we've got it together and I don't even know what I'm saying but it's real and it's mine and it's Me-Scully and it's everything I've ever meant and everything I've ever loved about him, about life, about this beautiful, beautiful night.

"Shut up, Mulder. I'm playing baseball."

THWACK!


End file.
